I have been thinking lately about God’s call on individuals and also churches.

Before being unemployed I had two jobs which I would say both them came about due to God’s direction. The first being Fusion, where I was a youth worker running programs, developing programs, mentoring young people and other stuff. Why the hell was I doing it. After school I studied TV Production not youth work, I had no intention of ever doing any of those ‘what a good person you must be” kind of jobs. I wanted to be a kick arse cameraman on a live TV show. In fact when a friend called me up and asked if I could come an sit in the youth cafe for an afternoon as they couldn’t open unless there was another volunteer there I replied with “I’ll do it if I don’t have to talk to any young people or go in the kitchen”.

And I didn’t, one afternoon before my night classes learning how to be a kick ares cameraman I headed up to the said youth cafe and sat on a couch grumbling to myself about the dumb young people I had to ‘babysit’. I also didn’t go in to the kitchen.

Around the same time another friend asked me if I wanted to go to Uganda with him to help him make a video for that hippy organisation he worked for called TEAR. I said yes and prayed about it and stuff. I was a poor student and TEAR being TEAR I had to pay my own way. Anyway I felt that God was telling me not to directly ask people for monies so I prayed and the next morning there was about half the money required in my bank as various people had transferred it. I thought it was all good and God was taking care of me so time to sit back and get on with being a kick arse cameraman. It got to a day or two out from the departure date and I still only had half the monies. So I thought maybe I should pray again. I did and low and behold the next day all the money was there. I’m pretty sure this was God wanting me to go to Uganda and it is defiantly what birthed my passion, interest and ‘calling’ to find ways I could help fight poverty. It’s not that I didn’t care before but it’s rather that I didn’t pay attention.

Anyway up at the youth cafe I started becoming more regular (high fibre diet) and ended up being a kind of back up for when people where sick or away. Then I slowly began doing a regular day and two regular days and so on and so on. Yes I did start to like it i wasn’t the grump on the couch anymore although I did still try to avoid the kitchen. Then after 6 years of doing that TEAR offered me a job and it was surreal. My passion and interest in fighting poverty where now linked with my newly acquired skills and passion for engaging and working with young people.

Then suddenly I found myself out of a job and still haven’t found a new one, what happened to God’s call????

Well I think I have worked out that God doesn’t want to be our high school career adviser and that instead he wants us to be disciples. Having a job is not following the call of God. We often say things like God has called me to be an accountant? What about the rest of your life and time is God’s call just between 9-5 and outside of that you are just plodding along being a good person and content with doing what God wants you to do???

Gods call and career are not the same thing. I have come to think that God’s call is probably the same for all of us. It is simply to Love God with all our heart and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Now of course a way me might do this is by having a certain job and God may have led you into that job but that job is not your whole call. I think we often forget this and just focus on our job / career as being the call of God.

There are things that frustrate me like when people may say that God has called them to be an accountant and He has placed them in that workplace so they can be a witness to their colleagues. It doesn’t frustrate me that people are a witness to their colleagues, it frustrates me that this can lead to assuming that this is their entire call and that God has placed them there to be with their other middle class colleagues. And that serving the poor and marginalised is not part of their role and God has called other people to do that. That doesn’t sit comfortably with me. I think regardless of what job God may or may not have placed you in, the face to face contact with poor and marginalised people (however you define those terms) is necessary.

It’s not just the role of people who are ‘missionaries’ or ‘community service professionals’ to interact, nurture and journey with the poor and marginalised, it is all of our jobs.

Which brings me to churches.

I think churches outsource discomfort to external groups, missionaries and a small group of congregation members.

Say for instance there is a soup kitchen in the city and a few people from the church go and serve  regularly to the needy who pass through the service. These people use some of their free time to go out of their comfort zone. And you may now be thinking ‘but they are the kind of people who can handle that sort of thing, I couldn’t do that’. Doing that sort of thing is not comfortable for anyone, it’s confronting and challenging every time. Anyway these people go regularly and it’s the same people, every now and then someone else will join them but it doesn’t last long. But the church as a whole feels like they are taking part as they knit blankets or donate money. I’m pretty sure God doesn’t want us to keep a comfortable distance form things we find confronting and I’m pretty sure that while the money and blankets are needed it’s not an excuse to take part from a comfortable distance.

Now that is just a made up example but I guess like with individuals I don’t think God calls most of us to be comfortable and some of us to be brave enough to step outside the comfort. I think he calls us ALL to reach out to the poor and marginalized in whatever way we can.

I have been thinking about Mark 10: 46-52. It was a passage I used regularly at TEAR to run a little interactive activity. But it shows Jesus walking along George street outside Town Hall station, flanked by his posse. A stinky, rag ridden blind old beggar shouts and mutters at Jesus as he hears him get closer on the footpath. Members of the posse shout out telling him to be quiet. But the old stinky man  shouts and mutters again “Hey Jesus have some mercy on me”. Jesus stops and asks for the man to be brought closer. some members of the posse go towards the old man and tell him to get up, he throws his green Woolworth’s bags full of  torn blankets and crushed coke cans to the side and stumbles to his feet. Jesus says to the man “What can I do for you?” The old man says “Rabbi I want to see”. Jesus told him to go and that his faith had healed him, he was healed and he grabbed his woolies bag and began to follow jesus down the road towards Hyde Park.

Jesus is the son of God, he would have known that the beggar wanted to have sight, he could have healed him without talking to him, or even just walked by. But he didn’t, he came face to face with someone who was the lowest of low in the society and said “What can I do for you?”. He yet again made himself a servant, the king of all kings asked a beggar how could he help?

If our Lord stops for the poor and doesn’t just throw a coin or give them a blanket but offers unconditional help who are we to outsource that job to others?

Yes we need people to knit, yes we need people to donate money to overseas aid, yes we need people to bake meals for the church freezer but doing that doesn’t over ride our responsibility to become an uncomfortable servant.

I didn’t just write this to attack the church or individuals there are heaps of people I know doing amazing things and churches too but also more needs to be done. I’m defiantly not perfect and this post is kind of an accountability post for me, for you and me to remind myself that no matter what job I end up doing it’s not following God’s call to turn up to work.

Discuss.